Colombia and Indians Dispute the Fate of Abandoned Twins

Published: August 19, 1999

BOGOTA, Colombia, Aug. 18—
Snugly wrapped in booties and blankets, a pair of Uwa Indian twins snoozed blissfully in adjacent cribs at a Bogota adoption center while an unusual custody battle raged around them.

The 6-month-olds, Juan and Keila Aguablanca, were born into the Uwa tribe, a traditional and insular people who customarily abandon newborn twins in the forest or toss them into rivers, believing they bring bad luck.

Juan and Keila escaped that fate when their parents left them in a public health clinic three days after their birth on Feb. 11.

By now, they could be living with a new family in Bogota -- or Spain, France or the United States, countries where many Colombian children are adopted annually.

However, the 8,000-member Uwa nation, stung by news media reports portraying its traditions as barbaric, is fighting to halt the adoption process. Uwa leaders have asked the courts to give them until December to re-examine the ancient custom -- and perhaps welcome back the twins.

But social workers and child rights advocates are adamantly opposed to that solution. They say Juan and Keila -- who has a respiratory problem and needs oxygen to breathe -- could never be safe among people who might have discarded them in the wild.

''Sincerely, I don't think an Indian community is going to simply change the customs it's been practicing for so many years,'' said Barbara Escobar, director of the Casa de La Madre y El Nino, the adoption center housing the twins.

She has petitioned the courts to keep Juan and Keila from ever returning to the Uwa reserve, a land of hills and forest near the Venezuelan border where the Indians fish and grow bananas and yucca.

Twin births are seen as an evil omen in many cultures around the world. In some, multiple births are considered something fitting for animals -- not humans.

But other societies have viewed twins as a gift from the gods or a sign of exceptional fertility.

With 80 tribes and 700,000 Indians in a population of 40 million, Colombia leads Latin America in recognizing Indians' rights to observe their traditions. In 1997, the courts even backed the right of one tribe to whip a man who took part in a murder.

But Blanca Lucia Echeverry, the top Indian affairs aide to Colombia's human rights ombudsman, said the Uwa case would set limits on how far culturally diverse Colombia can go in protecting minority practices the majority deems immoral.

''There's never been a case with such huge dimensions,'' she said.

The case is already showing there are limits to how far Colombia's Indians can live by their own rules.

On Aug. 3, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision rejecting the Uwa's latest appeal for more time to deliberate the issue.

Saying it was choosing the children's well-being over Uwa cultural rights, the court ruled Juan and Keila would be psychologically harmed if they went any longer without parents. That decision has to be reviewed by Colombia's highest tribunal, the Constitutional Court.

Meanwhile, Juan Manuel Urrutia, director of the Government's Institute for Family Welfare, said the twins might be given back to the Uwa, provided that the tribe guaranteed their safety and permitted strict monitoring by social workers.

In a telephone interview from the town of Cubara, just outside the Uwa reserve, a tribal spokesman, Jose Cobaria, said the Uwa believe that multiple-birth and deformed babies are harbingers of evil.